'These things I do not care about, but I do care for the life of the one who suffers even more than I do....
'You, though not much older than myself, have known life. I now know it, with a vengeance--for four nights I have not slept--for three days I have not tasted food--and, when I think of the state of her I love best on earth, I could wish that my head was as cold and stupid as the medallion which lies in your studio.
'I write very egotistically, but it is because my mind is crowded with one set of thoughts, and I long for one sentence from a friend.
'What shall I _do_? I know not--I am too hard to die, and too wretched to live. My wretchedness is not about castles in the air, but about stern realities; my hardihood lies in bodily vigour; but, dear sir, my mind sees only a dreary future, which I as little wish to enter on as could a martyr to be bound to a stake.
'I sincerely trust that you are quite well, and hope that this wretched scrawl will not make me appear to you a worthless fool, or a thorough bore.
With this letter was enclosed a pen-and-ink sketch of Branwell bound to the stake, his wrists chained together, and surrounded by flames and smoke. The rigidity of the muscles, the fixed expression of the face, and the manifest beginning of pain are well portrayed. Underneath the drawing, in a constrained hand, is written, 'Myself.'
Again he writes to Leyland a letter in which he dwells on his unavailing grief, and vividly points out its effects upon him. He says, alluding to the lady of his distracted thoughts, 'Well, my dear sir, I have got my finishing stroke at last, and I feel stunned into marble by the blow.
'I have this morning received a long, kind, and faithful letter from the medical gentleman who attended ---- in his last illness, and who has since had an interview with one whom I can never forget.
'He knows me _well_, and pities my case most sincerely.... It's hard work for me, dear sir; I would bear it, but my health is so bad that the body seems as if it could not bear the mental shock.... My appetite is lost, my nights are dreadful, and having nothing to do makes me dwell on past scenes,--on her own self--her own voice--her person--her thoughts--till I could be glad if God would take me. In the next world I could not be worse than I am in this.'